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Category Archives: Arabic ATBar

There have been recent updates to make the tool-bar more robust and compatible with browsers and the results have meant increased access to Google docs, Facebook (except Chrome at present) and Twitter – the text to speech and word prediction work when you change the background look and feel using the painter’s palate (change page style). The colour overlay can be toggled on an off for all websites and works with click through so you can go to another site even if you have the coloured overlay in place.

Work on the style sheet issues has also meant that the dialog boxes in ATbar do not always take on the style sheet of the target website. This also saves time when implementing new plugins and adding new things to the tool-bar as there are less style clashes so it is easier to customise the tool-bar for particular websites.

The latest version of the Festival Speech Synthesis System is now available as an option on the ATbar Market place website. The Festival plugin works in a similar way to the commercial Acapela TTS plugin.

ATbar now works with all the free speech synthesisers such as eSpeak and Mbrola but the quality of some of the voices is still a challenge for most listeners.

This month’s maintenance for the ATbar has included the updating of the wiki to include the instructions as a link from the toolbar with a small question mark icon. This has been completed in both Arabic and English and came about thanks to a question that we received via the contact form. The latter now also has our address as requested.

We also had a question about making toolbars in the market place and we have been updating the site to ensure that new toolbars can be saved as there seemed to be a problem with this aspect of the site. Making ones own toolbar is easy with a simple install to the bookmark or favorites area within the browser.

Both Nawar and Magnus have been looking into issues that affect the toolbar in terms of its presentation, such as cascading style sheets causing buttons and text to change. We are trying to find a way of eliminating these difficulties but it is easier said than done!

Nawar has also be researching issues around free and open source TTS voices to see if there are any new options or ways of developing ones ourselves. Not easy!

We have had a request for the story of ATbar and are looking forward to hearing when this will be published! Whilst researching for this article we also checked the statistics and found that we have had around 2,800 visitors to the download page (where the embed code is situated) in the last year, 1,125 WordPress plugin downloads. The total statistics for the English and the Arabic ATbar show that it has been used on 160,000 different sites and has had over 6.7 million uses in the last three years.

Nawar Halabi has very kindly provided an introductory video of the Arabic version of ATbar and we have uploaded it to YouTube.

YouTube video overview of ATbar in Arabic
Nawar has also been testing the Arabic version as part of our maintenance programme. We have found some issues with Arabic mis-aligned text at times and there are occasions when the CSS of the website needs to be isolated from the toolbar. Otherwise all the plugins appear to have worked well in the last few months.

Testing the Arabic dictionary

Testing the spell checker, text to speech and word prediction.

Where failures were reported these were double checked and found to be due to the word not being a partial word or not being in the dictionaries – usually due to an English speaking person trying to cut and past Arabic words!

We are updating ATbar all the time and working on new features such as the ability for the Text to Speech to read the Arabic dictionary if you want to highlight a definition and have it read back.

We have also found that if you maximise the Mindmeister map presented on this page by selecting the window in the map’s bottom toolbar – it opens a new window in the browser and you can launch ATbar to read the text on the mind map branches, add a tint overlay, use the dictionary etc.

The plan is to develop an automatic checking system to make sure the toolbar is always up and running as well as allowing us to keep individual statistics on each plugin so that we know they are robust over time. This will help us when we complete quarterly reports.

There is a consensus that Arabic dictionaries,
whether printed or electronic are not user-friendly.
Rather than being tools for learning, they are a
hindrance. Their complexity and their presentations are
not conducive to learning. Consequently, their impact
on vocabulary acquisition, even though not formally
assessed, is highly negative. (Belkhouche et al, 2011)

The authors of the paper go on to say that “the printed Arabic dictionary provides a low quality, a poor presentation, a disorganized structure, and an unscientific approach. A cursory browsing of Arabic dictionaries on the library shelves highlights these deficiencies.“

Nawar and Magnus have completed the work on a new online Arabic dictionary. This has now become part of the standard Arabic ATbar and we would be very grateful if it could be tested as much as possible.

Nawar tells me that “the dictionary database includes data from two modernized Arabic dictionaries (for word look-ups) and one traditional dictionary for root look-ups. More data can be easily added in. The dictionary plugin does not only use exact match to search for words and roots in the database, but also, it uses a light stemming algorithm to increase the reliability of the search. Prefixes and suffixes and the definite articles are removed if exact matching does not return results. The order in which these prefixes and suffixes are removed is not random but based on knowledge in the language and has been tested before for applications in information retrieval.”

The suggested hybrid retrieval approach employs various clustering and
classification methods that enhances both retrieval and presentation, and infers
further information from the results returned by a primary retrieval engine,
which, in turn, uses Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) as a primary retrieval
method. In addition, a stemmer for Arabic words was designed and
implemented to facilitate the indexing process and to enhance the quality of
retrieval.

The dictionary database was then set up by Magnus to link with any words selected on a web page and depending on the choice of a root or the word for a definition – results are shown in what is hoped to be the most helpful way possible.

We are incredibly grateful to the work of Nawar and his brother as well as Magnus as we feel this is a first in terms of how a dictionary can be presented as an online browser plugin to support those reading Arabic texts. We are aware more dictionaries can be added and possible improvements can be made, but we need feedback as to how useful this dictionary is to users. Please leave comments!

In the last blog Nawar mentioned the issues we are having with the Arabic version of Wiktionary and its presentation of definitions and alternative words when selecting text on Arabic web sites. The Wiktionary pages do not appear to be as well organised in Arabic as they are in English. They are incomplete and often return incorrect results or no results.

Arabic wiktionary homepage

In a previous blog we showed a diagram that highlighted the importance of organising the stems related to words along with the definitions taken from Wiktionary. The way the words are presented with their changing meanings is important and Maraim and Nawar have been discussing the use of crowd sourcing to achieve a successful outcome as this is not something that can be done immediately if we want to make a useful dictionary that makes the most of open source software alongside content that is also open and accessible to all.

We have been experimenting with voices on the ATbar as there has been some discussion about using a male voice as this may be more acceptable to some users. We really would value your input into these thoughts. The English version of the toolbar now has Lucy (F) and Peter (M) and the Arabic voices are now Leila (F) and Mehdi (M). This additional service comes thanks to Insipio and the work Lars and Magnus carried out over the last few weeks.

The return of the text to speech from the server has been reduced from 4 to 2 seconds – we will monitor whether this has an other unforeseen consequences.

Magnus has also add another plugin as standard to the Arabic and English toolbars. A colour overlay plugin that will allow users to read websites with less glare. There is a choice of colours – cream, pink, pale blue and pale green. We hope this will help those who have visual stress, find the glare of black on white hard to read as well as those with other specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. If you are using Chrome, Safari and FireFox browsers you will also be able to click through the overlay and even write with most forms. Sadly Opera and Internet Explorer do not support a click through ability. There is a step by step guide on the ATbar wiki in English and Arabic.

Looking to the coming months

Arabic Dictionary

Nawar has been working on a new dictionary that will offer users a word list that is more useful for Arabic speakers – it will be based on prefixes and suffixes with root words that may then link with Arabic Wiktionary if it exists and he is hoping to adapt the way the results are presented. It is hoped this will be finished by the end of March 2013

CSS issues

Magnus is working on the CSS issues that occur with some Arabic websites – we have recently been running evaluations on a series of important sites to see how prevalent the problem actually is with the poor presentation of our dialog boxes. I will be blogging about the particular issues and we will be illustrating the results of the changes as they happen. It is possible to change the dialog box for individual sites as has been done in the past but this is not the answer as sites constantly change so we need to find a robust solution that works for all. This will be finished by the end of January.

TTS free voices

TTS work has been on-going and Nawar has tried the Euler/Mbrola route which despite much experimentation has not been successful so far. eSpeak experiments are ongoing for the desktop version and it is hoped that we can still find a solution for both desktop and web based toolbar TTS functions by the end of March 2013.

Meetings with Mesar at ATSummit resulted in a discussion about NVDA being used for text to speech as well as a screen reader – in other words developing a way for the program to respond to selected text that has been visually highlighted as well as offer more options to reduce the verbosity for dyslexic users.

Arabic ATbar Desktop version (Windows Xp, 7)

We want to have a free TTS for the Windows system desktop ATbar when we link it to NVDA as at present the desktop version links to Narrator which does not read in all applications but offers good selected text to speech and screen reading feedback in Wordpad, Notepad, Internet Explorer and works with all individual letters typed as well as for all actions on the Windows desktop and with system operations -the help file has useful keyboard shortcuts.

The ATbar desktop version once installed launches at start up and has menu buttons for text to speech, coloured overlays, an onscreen keyboard and magnification as mentioned in our previous news update.

Spell Checking Service

The spell checking service has been updated and analysed by Nawar and one of the conclusions is that the error checking for long single words is relatively accurate without context. However, with words that are small and typed incorrectly there are two problems. One is that the word can be changed to another word that is not appropriate for the context but the spelling is correctly so the mistake is not picked up. The second problem is that if one small error has been made in a short word there are often too many options as to how this word could be spelt. The spell checker does not cope with grammatical errors and is unable to see the context of words.

Magnus has found that because the spell checker does not ‘use’ any words around the error he is having to develop a system that will record the words typed prior to the error and then capture a few words after the error. This is not as easy as it sounds! The service for correcting errors is in place without the sentences at present

Server Side Support

All aspects of the websites and toolbar that have required the move to ‘https’ have occurred. This may not appear to be important to users but it has been done to allow the ATbar and its services to be used on any secure sites such as banking services etc. The ‘https’ is a way of telling people that you are a trusted source – Magnus has obtained SSL certificates for the majority of our services – these will expire in 2015. The ATbar and its services now sit on a new virtual server. We are still looking to the possibility of having a redundant server if the one we are using fails, but this is a costly exercise.

As part of this process all versions of ATbar are now automatically updated.

Documentation

Dictionary

We have looked into possible alternative dictionaries instead of using Wiktionary. Wiktionary has a very limited word list and poor definitions when used in Arabic. Of the freely available dictionaries, Word Reference looked promising as it has a comprehensive English to Arabic translation database which is also a dictionary. It has an API but sadly no Arabic > Arabic with definitions or even stems.

One of the problems we face is that true Arabic dictionaries are structured in a different way to western ones. Many of the dictionaries we have looked at include some stem information but lack the more comprehensive information required to help users (example).

We need to understand the use of the dictionary required on ATbar in order to be able to provide the correct service. So any comments would be very welcome.

Desktop ATbar

We have developed a Desktop ATbar with magnification, screen reading, colour overlay with screen ruler and an on-screen keyboard. It is still in the beta version and we are in the process of improving its accessibility such as tab order and icon improvements. It is hoped a final release will be available next week. The toolbar has been tested on Windows 7/8 and should be backward compatible – it has not been developed for the Mac OS.

The code for the toolbar is open source and available for download from GitHub. We have included concise and comprehensive inline-documentation between code segments. Several free open source libraries have been used as part of the project and adjusted to suite our needs.

Now, we are making sure the toolbar is easier to install and there are several issues to consider:

Anti-Viruses blocking the toolbar.

Installing newer versions of the bar on-top of old ones.

Making the bar easy to use with shortcuts while avoiding shortcut collisions.

Fadwa ALRowais is researching the use of a framework that is aimed at helping those developing software in the Arabic language to be more aware of issues that might arise for those who have Dyslexia. This is proving very helpful in general terms for those of us who do not speak, read or write the language.

Navigation features

One navigational requirement says: ” Ensure that data entry, ‎data display and navigation controls are ‎consistent in direction (for example, in ‎Arabic interface data entry ‎for ‎textual content should be from right to left, for numeric content from left ‎to right and navigation controls for the next screen should point towards ‎the left and for the previous screen point towards the right).‎

Should the reset page icon on ATbar stay with an arrow heading left or should it be reversed as its intent is to send you back to an original look?

Whilst work goes ahead to make the toolbar and its menus read from right to left we want to ensure that all icons are correct and are representative of their functions.

What happens when you linearise a web page for easier reading in Arabic – it should go from right to left but this will only happen if you are using the Arabic version of the ATbar. Reading ahead you will see some discussion about justification and this can be done via the CSS (Cascading Style sheet file) on the ATbar website and also under the colour changes plug-in.

Text to Speech issues

It has been hard to find a localised text to speech (TTS) engine as voices in Arabic appear to only exist in Standard Arabic and the language spoken on a daily basis differs from the language used in education and in formal writing.

Localisation apart there is also the concerns about the way the text is read not just the type of voice. Whereas in English there are clear word margins and punctuation to help the TTS engine, in Arabic there are two types of spacing – the word boundary space and spaces that can occur within a word. Accurate pausing and intonation patterns are harder to achieve with synthesised voices in this case.

Website Content

Cultural aspects of the language that impact on help files and instructions – There is the need to have separate dialogues for each gender because the Arabic language is a gender ‎specific language (for example, the word (‎رَسَمت‎) /rasamat/ which means ‎‎’draw’ is used to refer to the female, while the word (‎رَسَمَ‎) /rasama/ is used to ‎refer to the male).‎ In fact many sites use the male version, but this is something we need to consider when working on training materials in particular.

Fonts that are easy to read are important such as Arabic Transparent and Simplified Arabic Fixed, avoiding angular font types such as Koufi and Andalus. In the case of the ATbar site Helvetica neue was chosen in sans serif style. However, we have also been advised that whenever possible it is important to offer automatic diacritization so the ‎appearance ‎of ‎diacritics can be controlled with options for full ‎diacritics, ‎partial ‎diacritics and no diacritics. The use of partial diacritics ‎with Arabic ‎script is better than ‎no diacritics,because those who are dyslexic may be depending on the diacritics for phonological assistance via their visual clues. An example of this occurs when discussing ‘tanween’ ‎‎/n/ formatted as ‎a diacritic, to ‎distinguish between root word ‎ending with letter ‘n’‎‏‎ ‎‏and ‎sound ‎‏/‏n‏/ ‏produced by ‎diacritics at ‎‏the ‎end of word ‎‏‎(‎for example‎: /‎n‎/ ‎at the ‎end of the word ‎‏‎(‎لُبْنَان‎) /loobnaan/ is different from /n/ at the ‎end of the ‎word ‎‎(‎لَيْلٌ‎) ‎‎‏/‏lailon/).‎

When it comes to Arabic text alignment the advice is to use right-justified or fully-justified ‎text. In ‎full-justified mode, Arabic orthographies use ‎connectors (kashida) elongating ‎specific characters of the cursive ‎script without producing extra white space ‎between words as in English texts. Fully-justified ‎Arabic text has been reported as ‎being useful for better recognition of letters and attached diacritics as ‎well as offering visual help when reading from right to ‎left and moving from top to bottom through ‎the lines.‎

We are hoping we can improve our web pages and the toolbar to illustrate as many of the guidelines as possible. More guidelines will follow as the framework is developed. Thank you Fadwa.

Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Center) has released the Arabic version of “AT Bar,” a powerful open source tool that enables people with disabilities to access the internet and computers with greater access.

This comes with a very big thank you for the Mada Center’s support for this project and the wonderful time I was given by David Banes and all those at the Center during this time. I could not believe it when I read the papers the next day. The Gulf Tribune, Creative Commons Qatar and Peninsula papers had articles about the ATbar along with ‘Qatar is Booming.com’.